Experimental study of a thin water-film evaporative cooling system to enhance the energy conversion efficiency of a thermoelectric device

Liang Jun Zheng, Sungmook Lim, Na Kyong Kim, Dong Hee Kang, Young Jik Youn, Wonoh Lee and Hyun Wook Kang

Energy, 2020, vol. 211, issue C

Abstract: In the study, a new method to enhance the performance of a thermoelectric generator (TEG) device by utilizing the water-film evaporative cooling is proposed. An experimental device was constructed by incorporating a water-film cooling pond with a commercially available TEG. Experiments were performed to investigate the effects of the main operating conditions (ambient temperature Tamb was 25 °C), TEG hot-side temperature (TH = 50–100 °C), ambient relative humidity (RH = 15–90%), and water-film thickness (twater = 1–9 mm) on the TEG output performance. Additionally, the output performance of TEG under different cooling methods was compared. A TEG prototype device was constructed to generate electricity/steam using seawater evaporation cooling without external electrical energy. The results indicated that TEG hot-side temperature and water-film thickness significantly affected output performance. However, the ambient relative humidity did not considerably affect TEG output performance. Given TEG hot-side temperature TH = 100 °C, ambient relative humidity RH = 15%, the TEG prototype device-generated open-circuit voltage of Uopen = 1.55 V, maximum output power of Pmax = 290.32 mW, and a steam generation rate of 9.82 mg/s. The results showed that evaporative cooling is an innovative method to improve the performance of TEG.

Keywords: Evaporative cooling; Experimental investigation; Thermoelectric generator (TEG); Thin water film; Electricity/steam generation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544220321472
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:211:y:2020:i:c:s0360544220321472

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2020.119040

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().